The present disclosure relates generally to the field of resolution of contact names.
Conventionally, in many applications (such as in instant messaging applications, email applications, in smartphone conversations, web browsing, etc.), there will often be reference to a “contact” and a user will want to immediately go to that contact (e.g., to obtain further information).
For example, if a first user is in a chat session with a second user (e.g., John), the second user might ask “Hi, have you talked to Tom about our new patent disclosure?” (referring to Tom as a third user). In this case, the first user might need to go set up a separate communication with Tom, the third user. However, a lot of manual activity is typically required to set up such a separate communication.
In the above scenario, there are a conventionally a few options:
As one option, if the contact's full email (e.g., tom@abc.com) is used in the conversation, then chat or email can be initiated with the contact through automatic link generation. This is true for telephone numbers or other explicitly identifiable data, too, but these linkages do not typically allow for natural use of vocabulary (e.g., referencing “Tom” and not tom@abc.com).
As another option, the user can manually establish a communication with the contact (e.g. click on an icon for Tom in the user's contact list).
As yet another option, the user can type or cut/paste the contact's name into a search of one of potentially multiple contact lists to find the contact and subsequently initiate the communication.
Further, some disambiguation methodologies exist. These include straight-forward, non-subject-related types of disambiguation (e.g., multiple similar names, then disambiguation based on frequency of communication with that name) and the searching of multiple sources of contact information.